Tagged: uk

15

A Large Evil Corporation do exactly what you may suspect, steal candy from babies and worship the almighty dollar. However, in the plus column, they do produce wonderful animations! I was alerted to their work, like many, through their superb Cornetto… Evil Vinyl designs. Something that started as a fun homage quickly began attracting a lot of attention. After the huge positive response and endless questions such as, “These are awesome, where can I buy them?” the Evil Corp. recently announced they have partnered with toy company Funko, to capitalise on their success.

A Large Evil Corporation has produced adverts for clients including Unilever, Orange, Virgin, and General Mills. Many of these adverts as well as their shorts can be enjoyed on their Vimeo channel.

Now you know all about the evils that A Large Evil Corporation do, you may want keep an eye on them. You can do so via their twitter and Facebook pages.

20

Before I get into this book review, I just want to make it clear that I have a personal interest in this book and the artist behind it, Mr Phillip Butah.

I have known Phillip for some time now in a professional and personal capacity. His work has always inspired me and I was all too happy and humbled to provide him with my opinions when he first opened the conversation about putting this book together. Also for our Blog readers, it’s worth noting that this book is not an out and out art book, it’s more of an illustrated book of autobiographical memoirs. I would therefore recommend it to both fans of Ed Sheeran’s music and fans of illustration and portraiture alike. Although much of the accompanying visuals are the work of artist Phillip Butah, there is also some varied and complimentary photography.

The Book Review:
The UK version of the book (to which I have kindly been gifted a first edition of by Phillip himself) is published by Cassell Illustrated a division of Octopus Publishing Group Ltd.

The hardback cover is a bright and striking luminous green wrapped in luxurious soft touch lamination. The cover contains a simple line illustration of Ed looking rather humble. This I felt was an excellent precursor to the overall flavour of the book which takes us on a journey through Ed’s more humble beginnings up until his latest’s album release. In fact humility is often an underlining feature within both Phillip Butah’s artistic portraits and Ed Sheeran’s music.

Phillip’s forward highlights this fact quite clearly when he talks about the need to put in at least 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become really good at any discipline. He also explains how even though both himself and Ed have made the necessary sacrifices to get to the level they are at, they both instinctively know and feel they can always do more and always do better. He also talks about this at the end of the book (which is dedicated to Phillip and the way in which he works) where he states that he is his “own worst critic”, with an eye for seeing his own work’s imperfections.

The book contains a variety of artistic styles and approaches however I find that its Phillip’s signature realism style that shines through. His images often look like he has deliberately peeled back some of the layers to reveal the inner workings and techniques used to create them. Leaving areas of the portraits only subtly rendered to create depth and interest. I personally like this idea as it creates a sense of imbalance or drama and can help draw your eye to what the artist finds interesting and what he wants to reveal about the person he is drawing.

Some of the styles in the book include inspiration from Czech artist Alphonse Mucha and even Soviet propaganda art. He treats us to a variety of mediums including, pencils, watercolour & pen, biro sketches, full blown pastel renders and graphite on paper chiaroscuro illustrations.

Ed Sheeran “a visual journey” is available to buy now. I think we will be seeing a lot more of Phillip Butah and his collaborations with Ed Sheeran.

13

Gemma Correll is a UK based illustrator, know for her guileless style. A style that has garnered her over 236,000 followers on facebook, and clients including Hallmark, The New York Times, Chronicle Books and The Observer. Correll has also published four books to date, her latest being, A Pug’s Guide to Dating.

Though her style does come under criticism, combining mature subject matters with crude drawings is a tried-and-true technique. One of the most famous and shining examples of this is Maus by Art Spiegelman. Another interesting element of Correll’s style is her regular use of just three colours; black, white and red. A very powerful colour scheme, with strong cultural meaning, that is more often used in design. So yes, Correll’s illustrations can be mistaken as childish, but then that would disregard the maturity and intuition involved to produce them.

4

Presenting Kyle Smart. Part-time tutor at Bristol UWE, member of the Drawn In Bristol collective, and full time freelance Illustrator. Predominately working in editorial illustration, he creates images for magazines and book covers. Some of his previous clients include Variety Magazine, Readers Digest, NoBrow Press, The Wall Street Journal, and Computer Arts.

Mr. Smart’s illustrations have humour and energy. His colour palettes are muted and harmonious. His technique seems predominately traditional, but with gentle digital touch. All combined create a very impressive and enjoyable portfolio to thumb though, which you can check out here.

10

Englishman Brian Bolland born on March 26th, 1951 has made a lasting impact as a comic book artist.

Although American comics didn’t actually appear in the UK until 1959, Bolland was instantly smitten by the medium. After starting out illustrating fanzines, Oz magazine and, the then-underground, London listings magazine Time Out, He landed his first comic work in 1972 on the comic titled Powerman. In 1977 Bolland snapped up a job at 2000AD working on various titles including Judge Dredd.

Due to the waves Bolland made on the comic book seen DC Comics gave him the opportunity to working on any of their characters. Choosing one of their flagship characters, Batman, he along with the poise penmanship of Alan Moore created a truly awesome piece of art, titled Batman:The Killing Joke. published in 1988 the book explores the Joker’s origin and is often held as the most controversial Batman story ever created. Bolland went on to collect a total of three Eisner awards and three Harvey awards.

After studying a copy of graphic novel The Killing Joke, Heath Ledger cited it as an influence on his Oscar-nominated portrayal of The Joker in the movie adaptation of BatmanThe Dark Knight.